


A Pirate's Life For Me

by adreadfulidea



Category: Mad Men
Genre: Multi, Other, Pirate AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-09-02
Updated: 2014-09-02
Packaged: 2018-02-15 20:02:50
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,237
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2241660
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/adreadfulidea/pseuds/adreadfulidea
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>What <i>do</i> you do with a drunken sailor?</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Pirate's Life For Me

**Author's Note:**

> This is very, very silly. I threw Mad Men and Pirates of the Caribbean into a blender. Do not expect historical accuracy. Credit for the idea goes to Wildcard_47.

 

 

The jolly boat was piled high with supplies - cheese, huge sacks of flour and oatmeal, a barrel of beer and one of pork. It was also unattended, tied to the dock and floating all by its lonesome. With an opportunity like that, what else could he do?

Stan was halfway back to the ship before he noticed that he had a passenger. He had been sitting amongst the flour sacks, half-covered by an oilcloth. No usual specimen, this - not a rat drawn by the smell of food, or a cat following the vermin onboard. He was young, dark-haired and dressed like a sailor. His head was lolling back against a stack of crates, bobbing gently with the motion of the waves.

Asleep, or just dead drunk? He supposed it didn’t matter. They were stuck with each other.

Ken helped him unpack the boat. “What do you want me to do with this?” he said as he came across the stowaway, still doing his damndest to hibernate through the war.

Stan looked down at him. It would make more sense to leave him behind. But it was a rough port, and he was liable to get his throat slit over whatever small coin he had on him. He looked too pathetic to be left to that inevitable fate.

Besides, Peggy might be able to make use of him - she had a knack for that, as evidenced by their own inauspicious beginning.

“I’ll bring him aboard,” Stan said. “He can sleep it off below deck.”

Ken looked surprised, but didn’t protest. “You need some help?”

Stan pulled one of the man’s limp arms across his shoulders for leverage and hoisted him to his feet. He didn’t react except to sway sideways, and he smelled like he had bathed in rum.

So, drunk it was. He didn’t have the look of a career souse, though. His garments were ragged but clean, and he seemed healthy enough. Perhaps it was a special occasion.

“Take his other arm,” said Stan, and Ken did. They dragged him onto the ship together.

Once onboard they dumped his cargo into a spare hammock in the mess deck. Joyce was sitting on the floor, writing out her letters, and she watched Stan rearrange the sailor so that he wouldn’t come tumbling out as soon as the ship moved.

“Who’sat?” she mumbled, the end of her quill pen in her mouth. Being one of the few who was literate, Joyce often wrote out letters for the men. For a price, of course.

“Present for Peggy,” he said. “Thought she could use a new cabin boy.”

Joyce snorted. “Yeah, he looks like her type.”

“More than you,” Stan said, cruelly.

Quick as a shot she kicked him in the back of the leg. “More than _you_ ,” she said with great satisfaction, and resumed her scribbling.

 

Ginsberg woke up. Unfortunately.

His brains were sloshing around inside his skull so badly that it took him several minutes to understand that it wasn’t him that was swaying back and forth, it was the floor. He sat up, gingerly, and took stock of his surroundings.

Had someone taken him back to the ship? That didn’t seem like anything his crewmates would do for him, or not without humiliating him for being sewn up to begin with. They called him a Jonah already.

Fuck, his head hurt.

He pressed the heels of his hands into his eyes and then looked around again, vision swimming with spots.

This … was not his ship.

 

Stan’s foundling rushed up to him in an absolute tear, dragging Ken along behind him. Ken was trying to hold him back and getting pulled forward by sheer momentum.

“You the one who brought me here?” he demanded, looking like seven kinds of hell from last night’s festivities.

“If I am?” Stan said mildly.

“I told him about you finding him in that empty boat,” Ken said, good eye widening, “and bringing him aboard.”

“Dangerous place to be taking a nap,” Stan said, and the man flushed with embarrassment.

“I was - I was guarding it.”

“An empty jolly boat?”

“It wasn’t emp - nevermind. I need to go back. I’m gonna get charged with desertion if I don’t.”

Stan looked left and then he looked right. There was nothing but shining blue water on either side. “You may find that hard to do. We left shore hours ago.”

 

The scuffle that followed was just getting entertaining when Peggy emerged from her cabin and plucked a large bucket of soapy water from the deck. She tossed it over them both.

They broke apart, shaking their heads to clear the suds from their ears. Stan at least had the good sense to pretend to be ashamed; his companion did not.

“What the hell is this?” demanded Peggy.

“Who the hell are you?” barked the sailor.

“ _Captain_ ,” Stan hissed, taking pity on him the same way he would any small, about to be devoured creature. “She’s the cap -”

It was far too late for that. “I’m the bloody Captain!” she roared, eyes like the churning waves before a storm.

 

She put them on the night watch and made them swab the deck while they were at it. They passed each other silently, for Ginsberg - his name was all anyone could get from him - stubbornly refused to speak.

It was a long night for Stan, away from Peggy and Peggy’s bed. He did what he could to make it shorter.

“I’ll just say that conversation would help pass the time,” he announced to the sound of the wind and the water. It didn’t answer him back.

Ginsberg dropped his mop with a clatter and walked away.

He stayed like that for two weeks until Joyce took him in hand. They went about together so much that Stan would have suspected them of being involved if he didn’t already know Joyce very well; she didn’t bend that way and never would.

When Stan sat down next to Ginsberg at supper one night he didn’t move away - progress, finally.

“What are you reading?” he asked, tearing off a piece of bread and putting it in his mouth.

“Don’t you usually eat with the captain?” Ginsberg asked, turning a page. He had the book open on the table in front of him. There were brightly colored birds illustrated within, taking flight, laying eggs, singing in trees.

“She’s busy,” Stan said, and lifted a page of his own. A monkey on this one, eating a fruit he didn’t recognize. “You ever see any of these yourself?”

He asked because Ginsberg showed every sign of being a landsman. Stan had no idea how he had become a sailor to begin with - he didn’t have a particular aptitude for it. He had been overheard telling Joyce that he thought the ocean was useless; you can’t even drink any of it, he had said.

“Some. I’ve been out here for a year. Saw one of those,” he said, indicating the monkey, “but the poor little bastard was in a cage and screaming his head off.”

“Who were you with, a merchant ship?”

“The navy.”

“Really,” said Stan. “ _Why_?”

Ginsberg came dangerously close to smiling at him before recovering himself. “I got pressed. How else?”

“I volunteered, myself.”

Ginsberg looked at him from the corner of his eye. “You did,” he said, voice flat with suspicion. Stan had to give him credit for consistency.

“I wanted to do my part for the war effort,” Stan said dryly. “You telling me that you didn’t?”

“And then pirates kidnapped you, too?”

“No,” said Stan. “No, I saw my cousin killed in action so that our captain could have a French frigate for a prize; that was enough for me.”

Ginsberg went quiet. When he spoke again his face had changed and he no longer wore the stiff, angry expression that he usually did when enduring Stan’s unwelcome presence. “I’m sorry to hear that. First time we were in combat I threw up all over myself. Saw a gunner get hit by a cannonball -” he shivered, and swallowed hard. “I hate it. I never chose this.”

“Look,” said Stan, “I may have overstepped my bounds by bringing you here -”

“ _May have_.”

“- but I can promise you this: the next port we dock in, if you still hate it here, you’re free to go. No one’ll stop you.”

“That isn’t a lie to make me more cooperative?”

“Nope,” Stan said. “You can move to Siberia and become a goatherd for all I care.”

“Huh,” said Ginsberg. “That’s reasonable.”

“I’m a reasonable man,” said Stan, grinning widely. “And the captain wants us to shake hands and be friends - she hates discord among the men. I’m very concerned about her opinion.”

“You would be,” muttered Ginsberg, but he took Stan’s hand when it was offered and that was a step forward.

 

Peggy was not born near the sea. The largest body of water in her little farming community was a pond you could swim across in fifteen minutes. She had never set foot on a ship until she was twenty years old.

She had run from that one horse town. Run from the weight of their expectations, from her mother’s judging glare on the back of her neck, from the baby, born and then lost - but most of all she had run from herself. To the city and then further, to places where no one knew her name and she could be whomever she pleased.

Yet no attempt to leave any of her past selves behind had ever been a success. She was that sad mousy girl, harbouring a secret in her belly. She was a pirate captain with gold rings in her ears.

Her mother would never recognize her, now.

Stan was a runaway, too. Maybe that was why they got along so well.

Stan’s castaway was an odd one. He could climb the rigging like a monkey, but almost fell overboard trying to look at some dolphins that were following the ship. She gave his custody over to Ken. Teach him navigation, she said, and keep him away from the edge.

It was working so far.

A month after their new crewman’s arrival they came across a privateer, Spanish origin. Not a large ship, and what should have been an easy conquest.

They fought like the devil, though. Peggy might have respected that more if not for the ball of lead currently in her leg.

The man was behind her when he pulled the trigger and only the Lord and his poor aim kept her from being a corpse. She went down, one hand wrapped around her bloody thigh, and reached for her pistol with the other.

There was another shot - _crack_ \- and Peggy startled, sure it meant her death.

But it was her assailant who was dead. He crumpled to the floor, lifeless, and behind him stood Ginsberg with a pistol in his hand and his eyes gone round in the clearing smoke. He was gray to his hairline and for a moment Peggy thought that he would faint.

He didn’t. “Help me up,” Peggy said, and he put his arms around her waist. She leaned on his shoulder, hobbling, and they made their way back to the _Belle Jolie_.

Joyce dug the musket ball out of her leg with gratuitous application of alcohol - both for the wound and the patient herself. “I don’t particularly like this,” she told Peggy, stitching her up. “Let’s not do it again.”

While Peggy was confined to her berth - surgeon’s orders - Ginsberg came in to entertain her quite a bit. She appreciated the gesture, as Stan was running things in her stead and couldn’t be around much. He was a lively, if erratic, conversationalist. She could never tell what he would say next. It was easy to see why Stan liked him.

“Do you think he’d like to eat with us?” she asked Stan as he settled in next to her at night, careful of her bandaged leg. “Or would that be favoritism?”

“I knew you’d like him,” Stan said, elbowing her in the side and being a general nuisance. “I’ve got good instincts, don’t I?”

She slapped him on the arm. “None of your perverted horseshit. I know what’s on your mind.”

But she invited Ginsberg for supper all the same.

They drank wine that he barely touched and ate an excellent meat pie and roast potatoes. “We’ll be in Barbados inside of a week,” she said, refilling her glass.

“Yeah?” he said, not catching her meaning.

“ _Yeah_ ,” said Stan, giving him a pointed look.

“Oh,” he said. “Well - it should be nice to see. That and other places. Wherever we go next.”

“Welcome to the _Belle Jolie_ ,” Stan said, and raised his glass.

 

Peggy celebrated her return to health by fucking Stan in an alley. He lifted her up, pressed her against the wall, and she kept her arms around his neck for balance. Her legs were wrapped around his waist while he rocked into her, his mouth on her breasts, the stone scraping at her skin through her shirt. She bit her lip to keep quiet - not that anyone in this part of would care, or notice - but she had to make noise when his thumb pressed against her clit in slow, firm circles, the sensation building and building until -

When she came she sounded shocked, like it was a total surprise, not something she’d needed since the start of her convalescence. Joyce had forbade her from sex, possibly as a punishment for getting injured in the first place.

They found Ginsberg in the back of some pub, getting his fortune told. “Shhh,” he said, “she’s not done yet.” His fortune teller was an older woman with eyes rimmed in heavy kohl. She was reading the future from a deck of playing cards.

“You’re going to go across water and meet strange people,” Stan said, and Ginsberg kicked him under the table.

“Where did you disappear to?” he asked after the woman left in a whirl of bangles and jewel-toned scarves.

Stan’s broad, cat-ate-the-canary grin would have given them away even if their mussed clothes and hair didn’t.

“Oh, you bastards,” Ginsberg said, a hilarious blush reddening his ears. “I didn’t want to know that.”

Peggy felt an undeniable rush of affection for him. He had killed a man for her, and he could still turn pink over the slightest implication of something naughty. “Sure you did,” she said, and kissed his burning cheek.

 

Ginsberg had spent most of his life doing something he didn’t want to. He had mucked out horse stalls until his hands blistered to make ends meet. He had slept in vermin infested hovels and woken up with rat bites on his feet. He had buried his father at nineteen, and part of himself with him.

He hadn’t let himself fall to pieces, because Pop would be so disappointed.

Except once, on the anniversary of that day, far from home and friendless. The bottles of rum had been right there, and he was all alone and so _tired_.

What he wanted had never mattered. There had been no time to think about it.

Until now. Now he knew what he wanted. He knew exactly, with a certainty he had never before felt, and he thought he knew how to go about getting it. If he played his cards right.

They would be in Barbados for a few more days. Hopefully that would be long enough.

He went with Peggy to a street market and kept her company while she rifled through trays of baubles, silver rings and strings of glittering glass beads, trying them on and checking the effect in a cracked mirror that was tacked to the stand.

“This can’t be very interesting for you,” she said. “It’s a big island. Lots of trouble you could be getting into. Lots of,” she met his eyes via her reflection, “women.”

“You hear me complaining?” he said.

“Fine, waste your evening. Don’t say I didn’t give you another option.” She made her selection and gave a coin to the merchant. Then she took one of his hands, holding him by the wrist, and slid a ring on his finger.

“I don’t think that shiny stuff is really me,” he said.

“It’s too big, anyway.” She tossed it back onto the tray and picked up another one.

“Can I ask you something?” Peggy made a noise of affirmation, so he continued. “How’d you and Stan meet?”

She frowned a little, puzzled. “Why do you care about that?”

“I’m curious, is all. I find you both interesting. You’re interesting people.”

“Oh.” A pleased smile crept across her face. “In jail,” she said, and shrugged. Which seemed about right.

“You want to show me some of that trouble you mentioned?” he asked, and her smile turned into a grin.

She brought him to a gambling parlour and he pretended that he didn’t know how to play cards so that she could teach him how. There was a man in a flashy frock coat watching them; he asked if he could join in, followed by one of his friends - and that was when Ginsberg _stopped_ pretending.

One thing led to another and Ginsberg and Peggy ended up running from some very angry gamblers who wanted their money back. They ducked into a storage shed belonging to a manor house - there was some kind of revelry happening inside, music and laughter spilling out into the night. No one noticed the trespassers, least of all the men chasing them.

Peggy laughed, all wild eyes and heaving chest. He was grateful that the moon was bright and the torches were lit, so that he could see her like this.

“Guess I showed you a good time after all,” she said, and he knew that the right moment had arrived.

“I never doubted it,” said Ginsberg, cupped the slight spread of her hips in his palms, and kissed her lightly on the lips.

She gasped against his mouth and her fingers clutched at the back of his shirt. He took that as a good sign and lifted a hand to her face, touched her plump bottom lip with his thumb, and kissed her again, deeper and with an open mouth. They were off for real - she pulled him in by the waist -

\- and he broke away, breathing hard. “I’m going to go back to the inn,” he said. “See you in the morning?”

“I - what?” she said. “Um. Yes?”

“Good,” he said. “You know which room I’m in.”

And then he backed away, before she could ask him to stay and ruin the plan.

 

He didn’t go back to the inn like he’d told Peggy - no, instead he went looking for Stan. Found him, too, at the wharf near the rooms they had rented together. He was sitting on a pier, enjoying a leisurely smoke and looking out over the water.

Ginsberg sat down next to him, on the edge. He dangled his legs over the water and looked up at the sky. “Beautiful night.”

“It is,” said Stan, puffing on his pipe. “Did Peggy come back with you?”

“No, but I’m sure she’ll be here soon.” At least, he hoped.

“Look at those stars,” Stan said. He always had a keen appreciation for beauty. “You know, before I joined the Navy I wanted to be a painter? But why confine myself to cramped little parlours, making portraits of the rich and chinless, when I could have all this?”

“I can’t imagine you anywhere else,” Ginsberg said. “You or Peggy.”

“What did you want for yourself, before your conscription?” Stan asked. “You’ve never mentioned it.”

“I wanted to be able to survive,” he said. To make enough to get out of the slums, and then enough to take care of his father. To buoy up his failing health, until that wasn’t possible either. And then just to see morning, the next day, the next week - to avoid the watery grave that surely awaited him. “But now I want to start to _live_.”

He put a hand on Stan’s knee. Stan only looked at him curiously, not pulling away. Ginsberg leaned in and kissed him firmly, lingering long enough that there was no mistaking his intentions.

Stan’s befuddled expression was a work of art.

“Well, goodnight,” Ginsberg said mildly, and got to his feet. “You know where to find me if you need anything.”

He took the stairs two at a time on the way up to his room. Once there he lit a candle and set it on the washstand, turned back the sheets on the bed, and settled down to wait - with fingers crossed.

 

When Ginsberg opened the door it was in a tentative way; his eyes searched their faces quickly, but upon determining their purpose he broke into a self-satisfied grin.

Peggy grabbed him by the front of the shirt, backing him towards the bed. She was going to screw the smug right out of him.

“You couldn’t just _ask_ ,” she said, and kissed him.

“I didn’t know how,” he said, looking relieved even as his knees hit the end of the bed and she pushed him down onto it. “That’s not something you can bring up in polite company.”

“What polite company?” Stan said, and sat down to take off first his own boots and then Peggy’s. She had climbed on top of Ginsberg and was too busy kissing him breathless to do it herself. Stan took her shirt off for her, too - apparently the spirit of altruism was moving him tonight.

Ginsberg certainly appreciated it. He touched one of her breasts with just the tips of his fingers, like her skin was made of something as fragile as cobwebs. It was endearing.

But unnecessary. “Here,” she said, and fit his hand to the curve of her chest. His hands were calloused - a sailor’s hands - and it felt wonderful. He kissed between her breasts, the soft swell of the sides, and finally licked across her nipples, clumsy and sweet and so _good_.

“Oh,” she said, a gentle exhalation of pleasure that turned into a moan when Stan unlaced her breeches and put a hand inside. He rubbed her inside her clothes until the cramped movement of his hand was making her twitch.

“I want them off,” she said, and he was very eager to oblige.

She sat on the edge of the bed with her legs over Ginsberg’s shoulders while Stan gave him instructions. “Now put your fingers in her - careful - there you go, that’s it. Keep licking, a little harder -”

Peggy came with Ginsberg’s fingers in her cunt, with his mouth on her, his breath panting against her. He kept working her through the aftershocks until Stan pulled him away by the shoulders.

“That’s enough,” he said, and Ginsberg kissed him desperately. Stan rubbed a soothing hand down his side.

When she moved back to make room Stan urged him to sit down. It was Peggy who opened his breeches, but Stan who went down on his knees.

“Oh my god,” said Ginsberg, and covered his face with his hands.

Stan sucked him very, very slowly. Every time he came close to coming Stan would stop, stroke him gently until he calmed down, and then swallow him down again.

“You have to wait,” he told Ginsberg, hand curled lightly around his cock. “Peggy might want to fuck you, yet.”

He was over-sensitive by the time she did, his cock wet from Stan’s mouth, frantically chasing his climax and too needy to set a proper rhythm. So she set one for him, sitting astride him and riding him the way she wanted to. He came with a whine and a full-body shiver; she wasn’t there yet but Stan helped out with his marvelous, marvelous hands. When she clenched around him Ginsberg sounded as if he was going to die.

“Peggy,” he said, “god, _Peggy_.” Like he had witnessed a miracle.

Stan was jerking himself off, leaning against her. He was always so unexpectedly patient, her man.

“Come here,” she said, pumping him quickly - he didn’t want to be teased, not this late in the game. She loved how warm he was in her hands, how solid.

“Wait,” said Ginsberg. He wrapped his hand around hers, letting her guide him. They stroked him together, getting slick with pre-come. “I want to - you could, um, use my mouth -”

“ _Fuck_ ,” said Stan, and came all over both of them.

After they cleaned themselves off - Ginsberg had a jug of water and some rags waiting nearby, he really _had_ been prepared - they debated the merits of finding a drink or a meal, but ultimately fell asleep in a tangle of limbs.

 

Ginsberg woke first the next morning. It was very early, but he felt refreshed and bright eyed. He had never slept so well in his life.

He got himself dressed and shook Peggy awake. She opened her eyes and smiled at him, sleepy-sweet, but didn’t raise her head from the pillow.

“What do you want for breakfast?” he whispered. “I’m gonna go out foraging.”

“We don’t ship out until tomorrow,” she said. “So I want you to get back in bed.”

She put her hand on his arm and without any effort on her part - and without any struggle on his - reeled him in.

 

 


End file.
